


Leverage, Season 1, Episode 3, The Two-Horse Job

by TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer



Category: Leverage
Genre: Analysis, Episode Review, Episode: s01e03 The Two-Horse Job, Meta, Nonfiction, Season/Series 01, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:09:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24357844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer/pseuds/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer
Summary: Warning: Contains spoilers for the episode and the rest of the series. Complete.
Kudos: 4





	Leverage, Season 1, Episode 3, The Two-Horse Job

I’ll be posting my The Miracle Job review at some other time.

For now, open to a farm in Kentucky belonging to Eliot’s ex-fiancée and her father. She drives up to see a barn is burning, and as a horse runs out, she yells for her dad. Making it out, he stops her from going in to try to save the other horses.

Later, in the father’s office, he’s talking to Nate and Eliot. He didn’t own any of the horses he trained, although, he’s always dreamed of owning a racehorse. The BGotW offered him a percent of ownership for training his horses, the horses weren’t running fast enough for BGotW, and so, BGotW tried to kill all of them. Plus, he’s blaming the father for the fire.

Nate offers to get the father some money from the BGotW’s insurance payout, but this isn’t what the father wants. He wants the horse who survived. “I’ll take care of him.”

He also wants for the BGotW to never be in the horse business again, but he’ll settle for the horse.

Eliot’s ex-fiancée comes in, and she’s not happy her father called Eliot. Eliot asks her about her husband, and it turns out her ex-husband is a lot like Eliot: He didn’t believe in sticking around, either. Ouch.

She storms out, her father goes after her, and Nate declares they aren’t doing this if he has to worry about Eliot’s emotional investment compromising him.

Because, Nate has never been too emotionally invested in any case.

Eliot assures Nate his main focus is on helping the father.

In Leverage Headquarters, Eliot is wearing glasses. Hardison gives the rundown on BGotW, and when horses are mentioned, Parker raises her hand. “I think I have a fever. Can I be excused from this one?”

Sophie tries to feel her forehead, aw, but Nate stops her. Partly, he’s still not down for adopting Parker and eventually welcoming Hardison and Eliot as their sons-in-law, but also, he knows his future daughter well enough to know there’s a reason she’s trying to pull the ‘I’m too sick for school’ routine.

There’s a flashback to wee!Parker holding Bunny. A person dressed in a horse costume beats up a clown. There’s a little boy next to Parker, and I never thought anything of this until it was pointed out this is likely the brother who died. Ow.

After some more interruptions to his presentation, Hardison is irritated.

Parker interrupts his irritation to reveal Nate’s old insurance company is who insured the murdered horses. Assuring them he won’t be emotionally compromised, Nate asks Sophie how her Southern Belle is.

Cue Sophie at a racetrack playing a southern businesswoman. She makes contact with BGotW, and as she does, a poker game is set up by the rest of Team Leverage. She takes him to it after the race. Hardison is from Dubai, and his father did business with Southern Sophie’s back in the day, Eliot is a horse trainer, and Nate is his annoying boss. Meanwhile, Parker is helping them cheat in a different room.

They win the horse from him.

Eliot thanks Nate, and they shake hands. “We’re done,” Nate says.

Not so much. Walking alone in a car park a car sidles up to Nate, and the audience is introduced to Sterling.

I’ll talk more about this in later reviews, but I disagree Sterling never loses. However, Mark Sheppard’s statement about playing interesting characters definitely holds true with Sterling here.

Sterling’s investigating his client, the BGotW, too, and he assumes, or at least, gives the impression he assumes, that Nate’s presence is due to Nate trying to get his old job back.

Nate’s like, ‘Yeah, sure, let’s go with that.’

However, Sterling says, no, Nate isn’t backing out, and of course, this wouldn’t stop Nate from just walking away, and so, Sterling hits where he knows will get results: He claims he thinks the trainer is responsible for the fire.

Nate isn’t going to let an innocent father go down.

“We’re insurance men, Nate. We don’t care about who’s innocent. Just who pays.”

Sterling knows better. There’s a moment in a later episode where he doesn’t know Nate as well as he thinks, but he does know Nate.

Sophie pulls up, and I think she heard Sterling over the earbud, but there’s no proof of this. It’s established the two know one another.

“This is getting very interesting,” Sterling says before driving off.

Nate gets in with Sophie, and for some reason, she already knows a new plan is needed. To me, this is more evidence she overheard the conversation.

The next day, Team Leverage is discussing Sterling and their plans in public.

Okay, headquarters are too far away at the moment, but Team Leverage has, at least, one car. I’m assuming they have hotel rooms or, at least, somewhere they’re sleeping. They could, at least, get a quiet corner in a diner or find a park bench.

Nate says, if he tries to give the horse to the trainer, Sterling will try to get it back for his client.

Would Sterling, though? I wonder.

Hardison and Parker are put on Sterling wrangler duty, Sophie is put on reeling BGotW back duty, and Nate is trying to keep patient when Eliot’s ex-fiancée and Eliot bicker when she’s brought in to help them.

Meanwhile, H&P lock Sterling in his suddenly malfunctioning car, and in response, he calls the police. Using a spotty American accent, he reports a super suspicious van, and when they gape at him, he waves. Heh.

Back in the stables, Sophie has brought BGotW in, and Nate’s annoying persona bounces over. They kick Eliot out of his office, and BGotW says his prick insurance agent says he can’t sell his horse until the claim is cleared.

One, he didn’t sell the horse, he lost it in a poker game, and two, poor Nate, torn between hating BGotW and wanting to agree aloud with BGotW’s characterisation of Sterling.

He tries to buy the horse back, but Nate’s persona wants 2 million. Said persona and Southern Sophie leave, and Eliot plays meek and sympathetic. BGotW reveals he’s far from out of the horse business.

When Eliot relays this to Sophie, Nate, and his ex-fiancée, the latter is not impressed with Nate’s lack of a plan. She tells Eliot to do the one thing he is good at: Walking away.

Following her, he demands to know why he’s the bad guy for leaving when she’s the one who got married. She got married due to him ghosting her for a long time. “What reasonable justification could you have for just dropping off the planet?”

There’s a flashback of him by tortured by foreign men.

He could tell her the truth, but whether he occasionally regrets it or not, he left her world a long time ago. He’s not going to drag an innocent person, especially one he does love, into his world now. The rest of Team Leverage all understand his world fairly well, and when he, Hardison, and Parker get together, they’ll understand fully what sort of person they’re really getting involved with.

His ex-fiancée probably never could even if he did show her. And she might truly hate him rather than view him as a largely bad memory. At least, there is some good in those memories. He’s not going to risk tainting that good.

For all he accepts this, when he grabs her, they end up kissing, it’s implied this leads to sex, and they both let themselves have this. They both know he’ll leave again, but he wants to briefly be part of her world, the world he left and can never really go back to again. For her, she wants to pretend for a moment in time all the hurt and anger he caused isn’t there and focus on the good feelings she does still have towards him.

Elsewhere, Sophie and Nate are talking about the case, and she wonders if his rivalry towards Sterling isn’t getting the better of him. Parker and Hardison come in discussing her phobia of horses, and their conversation gives Nate an idea.

Later, Sophie and Eliot talks. She genuinely likes Eliot’s ex-fiancée, but she tries to warn him against chasing the past.

“Sophie, sweetie, I don’t think you and Nate get to serve me that particular meal.”

They meet the rest of Team Leverage, and it’s decided they’ll temporarily steal a champion racehorse to fool BGotW into believing its an even better, more valuable horse.

Sophie gets the horse’s owner temporarily out of the way, Hardison picks up a Chinese couple from the airport, and Eliot drives BGotW to meet the others. No one’s seen Sterling, but Hardison mentions the Chinese lady has constantly been making bathroom stops.

I didn’t see the twist coming, I’ll admit. My first thought was she was pregnant. One of the early signs of pregnancy for some women is constantly needing the toilet.

BGotW is told the Chinese couple owns the super-rare racehorse, and using Southern Sophie to translate, he brokers a deal with them for it. They want a picture with him, and he happily agrees. The lady asks for direction to the nearest restroom, and in it, she gives Sterling his camera back. He pays her, and when she leaves, there’s a short video clip of Sophie and Nate on it.

Next, Sterling just barges into the room Nate is in, and I’m iffy on if this is real or not.

Sterling taunts Nate for drinking himself out of a job, house, and marriage, and Nate is calm. Sterling characterises Nate as crossing the line into being a common criminal.

There’s nothing common about Nate, and he tells Sterling so.

Sterling makes it clear he’s going to try to hang both BGotW and Nate.

The next day, there’s a hitch: The horse they temporarily stole is in a nearby stud farm. Eliot wants to do something now, and Nate accuses him of being compromised. Sticking up for Eliot, Sophie says all of them, including Nate, have something to prove, and right now, Nate’s compromised over Sterling.

The poly trio plus Eliot’s ex-fiancée talk in a truck, and it’s decided Parker will break into the building. She’s not an agreeing party to this decision until Eliot’s ex-fiancée assures her the room she’ll be dropping into won’t have any horses. And until Eliot says, “I need you to do this. Please.”

She goes in, and she lands right in front of a horse. Eliot’s ex-fiancée is apologetic, and it’s clear she wasn’t being deceiving in her assurances, just mistaken.

However, Parker realises horses aren’t as murderous as people dressed as horses can be. She lets the other three in.

Nate and Sophie talk after Sophie leaves BGotW at a stable, and they talk to the foursome. Said foursome is in a traffic jam.

Eliot’s solution is to ride the horse to the stables.

The BGotW buys the horse, and then, Sterling arrives to declare this horse is not the super rare, expensive horse the BGotW is claiming. In fact, it’s the horse who survived the fire, BGotW just bought him back, and it all looks as if BGotW is attempting insurance fraud.

Later, Nate signs the horse over to the father, gives him a pile of cash, and declares he’s deposited 12 million into the father’s account. Wow.

Nate and the rest of Team Leverage really like to go big on occasion, huh?

The man’s so grateful he promises he’s naming his next horse Mr Ford. Aw.

Nate leaves, and Eliot and his ex-fiancée talk. She’s glad he’s found a family for himself, and he scoffs as if he isn’t already half-way in love with Hardison, slowly learning how he and Parker are going to share and take care of their future husband, and isn’t going to be the best son-in-law ever to Nate and Sophie one day.

For all she doesn’t know his world, she does know him, and she can see how deeply these four people mean to him.

One of Kane’s songs plays as Eliot shares one last kiss with her.

In Leverage headquarters, Sterling appears, and I’m pretty sure this is a hallucination of Nate’s. It’s either this or Sophie let Sterling in. I don’t think Sterling could get past all the security Hardison no doubt has set up.

He has an interesting line, “Suffering doesn’t automatically make you a hero.”

True, but I don’t think Nate has ever been able to see himself as a hero. He wants to, at times, but he knows himself enough to know better.

They both agree neither will be so nice next time, and was the sexual tension between these two intentional between the actors or just something that happened? Like I said, I’m pretty sure Sterling here is a hallucination, but Nate’s had sexual tension with him throughout the episode.

Sterling leaves.

Fin.


End file.
